The caste based mosaic of Indian politics

Christophe Jaffrelot (1)

1 CERI - Centre de recherches internationales (Sciences Po, CNRS)

While caste politics all over India during the 1990s has been dominated by the Other Backward Classes (OBC) phenomenon, these aggregates - the OBC and India - have gradually lost their relevance, with individual jatis and states becoming the real units of analysis. Many of the regional parties, which now represent half of the Indian voters, are associated with a single caste and/or religious community - and this is also true of some state units of national parties. Such a development is largely due to the fact that the states themselves are often identified with a few jatis. This is the logical outcome of the redrawing of the map of India according to the linguistic criterion, a process which started in the 1950s. One could even argue that this redrawing of the frontiers of the state in large part stemmed from the demands of dominant castes, (...).

Domaines: Science politique

Christophe Jaffrelot. The caste based mosaic of Indian politics. Seminar, 2012, 633, pp.49-53. ⟨hal-01024572⟩